Politics over market economy must end

Whether or not the Unites States and the European Union will honor the commitment they had made when China acceded to the World Trade Organization 15 years ago will become a touchstone for the US and the EU leaderships' credibility.

In Section 15 of the Accession Protocol of China to the WTO, signed by all members including the US and China in December 2001, they agreed a 15 years' transition period to allow investigating authorities in other WTO members to use the analogue country method in their anti-dumping investigations against imports from China.

Under the analogue country method, investigators don't use the product price in the exporting country as a basis when determining whether to impose tariffs, and instead use third-country reference prices. As a result, more Chinese products are investigated, and in most cases they have to pay higher anti-dumping duties even though there are problematic issues related to price estimation in China.